


Help to build the desert

by antipattern



Category: Breaking Bad, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie - Fandom
Genre: Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Probably avoid this if you have arachnophobia, Stockholm Syndrome, The aftermath of the pepperoni pizza scene, Todd being incredibly weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-25 17:35:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22219747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antipattern/pseuds/antipattern
Summary: The tarantula watches them eat pepperoni pizza, drink ice-cold beer.
Relationships: Todd Alquist/Jesse Pinkman
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46
Collections: Blue Christmeth 2019





	Help to build the desert

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kutsushita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kutsushita/gifts).



Todd talks to it as he works — making snowglobes, which are sort of like the opposite of the desert, in a container like the jar Todd found it in. Except there are no holes for air in the snowglobes, because the things Todd makes do not need to breathe.

“Are you following?” Todd asks it, forgetting to feed it. The tarantula follows well enough. It listens to him talk about something called Jesse, someone called Miss Lydia, Uncle Jack, Lester, Kenny. It listens to him talk about meth, which the tarantula imagines as a sandstone butte rising high above the desert.

The tarantula wonders, sometimes, about the boy who put it in the jar in the first place. It knows that he died, because it felt the vibrations when he fell, but it was curious that Todd killed him, because they seemed to be the same sort of creature: a head with two eyes, two arms, two legs and a torso. It wonders what sort of creatures the boy’s body fed.

It can’t exactly ask about Drew, though, so it has to settle for the bits and pieces of the news it hears coming in from the television in the other room. Todd has taught it the name of many things. Mostly the news talks about a Walter White, and sometimes Todd watches sports or turns the whole thing off and listens to music. Sometimes Todd will move the tarantula’s cage into the living room so it can keep him company.

Todd has guests once, two people that he has told it are something called welders. He is eager to show off his apartment to them and, by the sounds of it, they are eager to leave. The tarantula never sees them and they never see it.

Aside from Todd, it encounters one other person — older, female, but otherwise a thing like Todd that he calls Sonia. Sonia’s arrival is heralded by a caustic smell and scrubbing sounds. Each time she ventures into Todd’s bedroom and sees the tarantula, she makes a crossing motion over her chest and mutters something unintelligible under her breath.

Then one day Todd gets home early, and Sonia tries to show him the money in the encyclopedias, which Todd had proudly displayed to the tarantula weeks before. It hears a cry, a shout, a struggle from the kitchen. There is grunting and wheezing before there is silence, and the whole thing sounds like television. Then Todd sighs, enters the bedroom, and wipes his hands on his jeans.

It notices the way Todd’s pants sag. Todd catches his breath.

“Aw, I don’t think she likes you,” Todd tells the tarantula.

He keeps Sonia’s body in the kitchen, stepping over it to make soup or grab napkins, and the apartment fills with a different smell — rotten and sweet.

It knows that Sonia is now a thing like Drew, and it expects to join their ranks soon if Todd doesn’t feed it more consistently. This does not trouble the tarantula greatly, although it would not like it if Todd were to talk to its corpse the way he talks to the corpse in the kitchen. It hears him blather to the body about how his uncle and the guys are going out of town this weekend, and he wants to bring Jesse to hang out, since Jesse’s been good lately and Todd wants to try positive reinforcement, which is something Miss Lydia told him about.

When Sonia does not respond, because she is dead, Todd seems to remember that he killed her. “Oh,” he says sheepishly. “Sorry about that. Uh. I’ll get Jesse to help with you.”

It wonders what kind of creature this Jesse is, which lives in a pit and needs its hands uncuffed to make meth and chained up to sleep, which needs to be punished sometimes but is otherwise a really good friend. Todd likes to talk about Jesse, which apparently has four limbs and had broken ribs so this Jesse-thing can’t be the same sort of creature as the tarantula, but the tarantula can’t imagine that Jesse is the same sort of creature as Todd.

“You’ll meet Jesse real soon,” Todd tells the tarantula, excited. “You’ll get along, I think.”

Jesse is not a tarantula. It hears Jesse before anything, and Jesse speaks, although not like Todd or Sonia.

The tarantula catches a glimpse when it hears Todd tell Jesse about the encyclopedias, and Jesse enters the bedroom. “Bitchin’, right?” it hears Todd call after Jesse as Jesse stares at it.

It hears them struggle to wrap it up in Todd’s favorite rug, hears Todd retrieve his belt. They leave, and they take the body in the kitchen with them. They are going to bury her somewhere pretty, and the tarantula wonders if the rug will come back.

While they are gone the tarantula goes back to dreaming. It wishes it could ask Jesse about meth, how Jesse helps to build the desert.

With Sonia gone the corpse-scent starts to subside, so when Todd enters through the front door with Jesse in tow, the tarantula can smell grease and perspiration. It hears bottles clink onto the countertop and boxes thud onto the table. “You should put those in the fridge,” Todd says, and it hears shuffling, the opening and closing of the refrigerator door.

“Huh,” it hears Todd say, and then — not quite yelping, but a sharp intake of breath, and they are moving towards the bathroom. The bedroom is closer to the bathroom than the kitchen, so it can hear them better now.

“Nnn, nnn, nnn,” Jesse says, and then Todd removes his hand from Jesse’s mouth so the sounds become “no, no, no.”

“Relax, Jesse,” Todd says, soothing. “I’m not going to mess with you like the other guys. We just got to get you cleaned up before we can sit down and have pizza. That’s all. I know you’re not going to try anything else today, okay?”

There is quiet sobbing, which must be from Jesse, and gentle shushing, which is certainly from Todd. “We’re going to have a nice night in,” he says, and starts the water. There is a splash into the tub and shallow breath that turns to hiccups.

“You’re doing good, Jesse,” Todd says. He clears his throat, trying something. “You’re being a really good boy.”

Jesse howls. Jesse is pushed underwater, but not before the tarantula remembers the desert, a coyote it had stopped to watch die.

“Sorry,” Todd says, as Jesse gasps for air. The water shuts off and Todd says “Wait here” and enters the bedroom, flips on the light and grabs some clothes and a towel before returning to the bathroom. He dries Jesse, helps Jesse into his clothes, guides Jesse into the living room.

“Sit down,” Todd says. “Wait here,” he says again.

Todd comes back into the bedroom, grabs the tarantula’s cage, and carries it into the living room. Jesse is sitting on the floor between the couch and the television. It can feel Jesse’s eyes on its legs and on its cage.

By way of introduction Todd does not bother to introduce them. “I don’t mind cold pizza,” Todd says. “Can you grab a coupla beers?”

Jesse gets up and fetches two bottles and a bottle opener. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Huh?” Todd cracks his open. “Oh. Well, I can’t have you getting this place all messed up, since I don’t have a housekeeper anymore.”

“Uh-huh,” Jesse says. “Yeah. Totally.”

The tarantula watches them eat pepperoni pizza, drink ice-cold beer. The television is on and they say nothing.

“Hey,” Todd says, once they are finished. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and smears pizza sauce above his lips. “Isn’t it wicked?”

Todd opens the tarantula’s cage, scoops it up, and deposits it on Jesse’s shoulder. He frowns. “Hey, wait, hold on. Put your head back against the couch.”

Jesse complies. Todd watches it crawl onto the top of Jesse’s head, move onto his face. Jesse’s breath moves the hairs on its underside, and it feels the vibration from Jesse’s throat, something high-pitched and surprised. It moves slowly, and the keloid scars on Jesse’s face come into sharp relief, and the way they got there comes across.

“They don’t have very good eyesight,” Todd says. “So this is a better way for it to get to know you.”

Jesse says nothing. He doesn’t have to, because Todd is right. There is a lot to be learned from traversing a rock, or a face, or a jar, or a cage: tarantulas are in possession of many desert secrets.

The tarantula crawls down Jesse’s arm and Todd puts it back in its cage, puts the top back on and returns the cage to his bedroom. He hears Todd sit down next to Jesse in the living room, put an arm on his shoulder. “So, what video games do you like to play?”

Months later Todd will be gone. The welders will come, find its existence deranged. Jesse will search for the money that turned Sonia into a corpse, because it will be dead without it. Jesse will not talk to the tarantula as he works to tear the place apart, but he will take the time to feed it.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know that much about tarantulas, but they don't smell or hear or taste in the traditional sense. They use the hairs on their bodies to detect sensory stimuli, and their eyesight is not very good. For this to work even a little requires above-average suspension of disbelief.


End file.
